


Prelude to the Trial of Bucky Barnes

by WinterHobbit



Series: Captain America: Wakandan Soldier [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Canon Divergence - Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Dehumanization, Gen, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Post-Black Panther (2018), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, The Raft Prison (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29416761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterHobbit/pseuds/WinterHobbit
Summary: Bucky had only started becoming a human being again in a Wakandan village, but the world wouldn’t let him alone, and in the previous story, he ended up turning himself in rather than see Wakanda endangered over him. Now he is sent to the Raft prison. Alone with just his thoughts, how does he fare?
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes & Shuri
Series: Captain America: Wakandan Soldier [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1733806
Comments: 5
Kudos: 17





	1. Life in Solitary

Bucky felt good about turning himself in, and it had been his decision. Wakanda had saved and protected him, and now he was returning the favor. The US Marshals chained his hands and legs and connected the chain to a belly chain and he had to fight off panic, but he reminded himself it had been the right decision. When they took him by armored helicopter to the middle of the ocean, he told himself it was still the right decision. Then a giant metal monstrosity came out of the ocean depths. The helicopter landed and the ceiling closed in on him, cutting him off from the outside world. A US Marshal turned to him with a sneer, “That was the last time you’ll ever see the sky.” He fought off more panic and did some more deep breathing. They slowly descended into the bowels of the Raft. “Now you’re going to bottom of the ocean,” the man laughed. Bucky wondered if it were too soon to ask Wakanda to get him the heck out of there, but if he escaped, he would be endangering Wakandans in the process, and he would be on the run for the rest of his wretched life.

He straightened his shoulders. He wasn’t going to let them defeat him, for he was a human being. But the further they got into the bowels of the prison, the more panic he felt. Did the walls feel like they were closing in on him? No, he wouldn’t let them; he took a deep breath. He could handle this.

They put him in a little cell and shut the door. He took deep breaths and tried to calm down. His cell was about 8 foot by 10 foot. There was no window, and even if there were, there was nothing to see but metal corridors. The weight of the water above bore down on him. The bed, the sink, the toilet, and the shower were all molded of one piece. He couldn’t see any lights and had no control over whether the cell was lit or not. There was no mirror. He sat on the hard bed so unlike anything in Wakanda. It was a bed that could have been supplied by HYDRA; he was not going to scream. He was not going to scream.

He had no sense of time now, for there was no one around and nothing at all to do but stare at bare walls. He looked up at the ceiling, but there was no pattern to count. His dead victims started appearing through the walls and stared at him, but he pushed those thoughts aside. Should he talk to himself? What should he say?

Had he done all he could to protect Steve as a young child? Remember that time he’d wished he could have finished his ice cream first? What kind of a friend wishes he could eat ice cream instead of saving his friend from a bully one more time? He’d mouthed off to his mother once, too. He could feel the dead crying out, “You’re worried about ice cream? You killed us!” He began pacing in an attempt to keep the dead at bay, only to have Steve’s battered face loom in front of him. He looked just like he did when Bucky had nearly killed him on the exploding helicarrier. “Why did you do it?” Steve’s face asked. Bucky started walking on the diagonal to avoid Steve’s face in front of him and the dead behind him. 

He could hear Sam’s scream after Bucky had pushed him off the helicarrier and Sam plummeted to the Earth. “You pushed me off!” he cried. The only reason Sam survived was that he was bringing Steve’s parachute to him and made an emergency landing.

“You survived,” Bucky told the memory.

“No thanks to you,” Sam spat back.

“You could at least recognize me,” Natasha’s strangled voice said.

“I’m sorry,” he told the vision.

A sound startled him, and he realized that food had been sent down a chute that ended in a narrow slit by the time it got to him. Some sort of meat glop, a hard biscuit, and a mushy vegetable. Was the food poisoned or drugged? But if he didn’t eat this, would they ever send food again? He ate the tasteless food and sat back, waiting for his veins to turn into fire. 

How long would he be alone? The Wakandans said they would get him out of here if it ever got to be too much. Just press the sensors hidden in the back of his teeth and palate in a certain order, and they would come, they said. Could the Wakandans really free him from this place, or had that been a lie to make him feel better? Maybe they told him that just to make him do their bidding. His tongue flicked on the back of his teeth and his palate, but he didn’t press. Would that really bring the Wakandans to save him from this place? The Wakandans were good people, so surely they meant what they said…. But what if they forgot about him now that he was far away and their country was safe?

He waited. What if the guards forgot he was down here? What if they cut off the air? Was it getting warmer and harder to breathe? Yes, it was! He tried to fight off panic and failed. He couldn’t breathe! He was choking! No, he was hyperventilating. He took a deep breath and held it, wondering if it would be his last. Then he slowly let it out. He had enough air to take another. And another. So they weren’t cutting off the air.

He waited an endless time. The lights turned off, and he jumped. Was that it? Would they cut off the air now? No, he could breathe. Would water seep in from the ocean? No. Maybe it was night time and they wanted him to sleep. He sat up in the bed, waiting for assassins.

He jerked awake, having fallen asleep in the darkness in an awkward clump. Why had he woken up? Because the dead wanted to have a go at him. They stared at him, some in their death throes, some simply staring based on pictures he’d found of them. By now it was almost reassuring to see something as familiar as the dead haunting his sleep.

He jerked awake when the lights came back on. Eventually, more food came down the chute. He never saw a soul and never met another human being. He tried to stare blankly at the featureless walls, but every bad decision he ever made came to attack him. He was alone with nothing but his thoughts and the dead, and he knew he was going to go crazy.

Eventually, a bored guard appeared, “Do you want recreation today or not?” That included a strip search. “Hey, what’s this on your metal arm?” It was the goat Lencho, a Wakandan child, had painted so that Bucky wouldn’t be afraid of anyone putting a red star there. Why had he consented to such a thing? He’d have to have it removed if he ever got out. He pictured Lencho’s disappointed face, but the Wakandan children had probably forgotten all about him by now. The guard tried to scratch up the goat. “What is this made of?” Bucky moved his de-powered arm out of the way, and the guard took offense, pushed him down in the prone position and handcuffed him. Recreational privileges were denied.

When he was back in his cell, he checked the arm as best he could, and the goat seemed okay. Good, he couldn’t take it otherwise.

Later, the mushy food coming down the chute nearly caused a heart attack. The walls holding off all that water bore down on him, and he could see the water gushing into his cell even if the wall was dry when he held up his hand. His head pounded and he thought his brain would break out of his skull. He barely slept. The dead seemed to become more real and took so much room they forced him into a corner. He hated when the food came because he had to go through the dead to get it, and they didn’t like parting for him. The smell of the food glop became overwhelming. 

When the guards came, their steps thundered in the hall. They came and asked if he wanted rec today. He always said “yes” when he could think fast enough before they left without a word. But then he’d have to go through the dead again, and sometimes the door was closed by the time he got there, and he missed his chance for recreation. When he did get it, he could walk ten steps in a line in a featureless room. There was also a soccer ball, but it was flat.


	2. Chess Match

Princess Shuri steadied her nerves and projected an aura of calmness as the Dora Milaje flew her to the Raft. She had to leave them and her kimoyo beads behind in the flyer when they landed. Stern-lipped guards checked her out thoroughly before taking her to Secretary Ross, who looked about as pleased to see her as she was to see him.

Everyone on the Raft wore dreary, subdued colors that matched the place. Shuri was dressed in a bright orange vest with black leggings with white stitching. She felt like a target, but she told herself she was bringing joy to the gloom.

“Your highness,” Secretary Ross said, nodding with his head.

“Secretary Ross.”

“I’m sorry you’ve come all this way for nothing; the prisoner Barnes is not accepting any visitors.” He didn’t look very apologetic.

“I doubt you asked,” Shuri said, “But I did not come here to see him.” It caused her heartache to say such a thing, but it put Ross off balance, so it was worth it. “I know all I need to know about Sgt. Barnes’ condition.” She acted as if that were the only reason she would talk to him; it's not like Ross was going to let her talk to him, anyway. 

“Then what are you here for?” Ross asked.

“I wanted to inform you that Wakanda does not approve of your treatment of Sgt. Barnes.” Ross blew a raspberry, and she knew she was losing him. “We either come to an agreement, or we will break Sgt. Barnes out of this Raft.”

Ross crossed his arms and cocked his head, “Why would you tell me this?” 

“Because if we can come to an agreement, it would be better for everyone,” Shuri said, “We avoid a messy scene, and you come away with your career intact.”

“My career is just fine, thank you,” Ross said.

“Is it?” Shuri asked, “You’ve already had one breakout under your watch. I believe Captain Rogers broke out four prisoners by himself in his shirtsleeves.” The muscle in Ross’ cheek tightened, and Shuri knew to keep going. “You oversaw the Bio-Tech Force Enhancement Project that ended with Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk and Emil Blonsky into the Abomination. I believe there was loss of life involved. You also managed to destroy your relationship with your daughter by trying to kill her boyfriend.”

“That’s enough,” Ross said. “I’ve served my country loyally for over forty years, and I did what I had to do.”

Time for her next argument. “I hope your President Ellis sees it that way,” Shuri paused. “He looks forward to deepening a relationship with Wakanda so he can get access to our technology; but if we’re unhappy regarding Sgt. Barnes…” She shook her head sadly, “You are one mistake away from being fired.”

“What do you want?” Ross asked, a little tightly.

“We know that Sgt. Barnes is suffering from being in solitary for 23 hours a day.”

Ross shook his head, “It’s not my problem if he can’t handle a little solitary.”

“I believe it is,” Shuri said. “You see, when I worked with Sgt. Barnes, he could function as a human being; you have undone all my work by putting him in solitary, and that makes me very unhappy. I take it personally, you know. HYDRA left his body and especially his brain a mess that only the serum could heal, and that at a price. We were still giving him medicine which we are willing to sell to you, for a nominal price of course. He also requires mental health counseling to deal with what you have put him through. Putting him in isolation in the base of the Raft on the bottom of the ocean is barbaric; he needs to be able to see other human beings. It’s also your problem if he doesn’t eat, because if he dies on your watch, I would worry about your job if I were you.” She smiled sweetly.

“His buddy broke other enhanced individuals out of the Raft, and Barnes is a ruthless world-class assassin. He’s not leaving solitary.”

“ _Was_ an assassin,” Shuri said, “But he was brainwashed.”

“Are you seriously asking me to make it easier for you to break him out?”

Shuri shook her head and shrugged, “It doesn’t matter where he is because we can break him out wherever you decide to put him. There simply would be fewer casualties if he weren’t in isolation. Massive casualties are a bit messy, wouldn’t you say?”

Ross shook his head, “I’m not helping you.”

“You also broke his prosthetic arm while trying to depower it,” Shuri said, wagging her finger back and forth, “You have made a friend of mine very unhappy.”

Ross spread his arms, “You can’t expect us to have a prisoner with a superpowered arm.”

“You’ll need to pay for the arm, of course,” Shuri said as if he hadn’t spoken, “Once we fix it, we could show you how to lower the power if we had to.” She sighed, “A little silly on our part. What’s the point in making an awesome arm if we have to depower it? But it wouldn’t do to have it broken.” She worried how Sgt. Barnes was taking it.

“The answer is ‘no,’ “ Ross said. “I can’t believe you’re even asking, so what are you really here for?”

“Oh I’m not asking, I’m warning,” Shuri said. “You need to treat Sgt. Barnes like your best friend.” Assuming he had any.

“Why do you care?” Ross asked.

The man was an idiot. Because the heart-shaped herb enhanced her king, and the Raft was the only prison designed to imprison enhanced individuals. Why did he think she cared? They’d had a low-level operative in the Raft almost as soon as it was built. But she also was concerned about Sgt. Barnes. “We have learned a lot about the rest of the world by working with Sgt. Barnes. So, if you don’t want to treat him like a human being, fine, you have been warned. Too bad people are going to die on your watch - again.” With that, she got up and started to walk away. This wasn’t going to work, but it had been a long-shot and would lay the groundwork for plan B.

“You know we’re just going to tighten our security now,” Ross said. “You’ve made it harder on yourself.”

Shuri sighed as if bored, “I know, and your security is very impressive. It has a dampening field, and the more powerful inmates have neural inhibitors. The guards are picked by random from a list of all those in the top supermax prisons who want this assignment. The codes on the doors change every 2 hours, and random new codes require palm print, voice check, and eye print. Weapons are keyed to a guard’s hand print and are useless to anyone else. Any attempt at breaking out electrifies all doors and requires a separate code, with palm print, voice check and eye print, to disarm the door. It also sends sleeping gas into all cells. The disarm code changes every 30 minutes. The walls have ray guns, and so on. We know. We’re impressed.” The tone suggested she wasn’t. 

Ross frowned, “All I can offer is to check on his mental health.”

“Not just check. We know he barely eats anymore. He doesn’t sleep, he sits in a corner all day, and it takes him forever to walk across his little cell like he’s walking through molasses. That’s all on you. Solitary confinement for 23 hours a day? That’s inhuman.”

“I can’t make it easier on you.”

“Very well, you leave us no choice,” Shuri said. Definitely plan B. She got up and left.

She passed by a man fixing a lamp; he did not look up, nor did she look at him.


	3. Plan B

A week later, Secretary Ross was working in a temporary office while working on an assignment for President Ellis. Suddenly, the lights went out. “Security!” he called out. 

“They can’t hear you,” said a voice he could not place, with an accent he could not identify.

“What do you want?”

“You are judged and you will not see anyone until you cooperate. You will be given food and drink, but you will not go beyond the small confines of your office. You will not receive visitors. You will not receive letters. A small room with a flat soccer ball will be provided for your recreational needs. You will sit and you will think about life until your thoughts merge together and you cannot concentrate at all.” The lights turned back on, and the voice stopped.

“Hello? Hello?” Ross called out, but no one answered. Ross tried the intercom but it didn’t work. His smartphone and his computer didn’t work anymore. He tried to break out but couldn’t. He tried to slip a note under his door, but it was blocked. He sit and stewed. 

A sweet smell filled the room, and he suddenly got very tired. When he woke up, someone had brought food, and he vowed that next time he would fight it. Surely someone would notice he was missing soon. 

The food was tasteless mush along with a hard biscuit.

He didn’t know what was going to happen. His office, normally a fine enough place, was now a prison. How could they cut him off from everyone else? What did they want? He spent a miserable night.

In the morning, food appeared before him again. Even though twice now they’d managed to bring the food in without him being awake, he felt this was the weakness he would exploit. He spent the morning planning various options.

The voice came back on and he jumped, “This has not been a perfect recreation of what your victims face, but we hope this exercise has made you think. Your electronic equipment will work again, and the door is unlocked.”

“You’re from Wakanda, aren’t you!” he cried out, even though the accent was not correct. He was met with silence, and he rushed out of the office.

A secretary looked at him, “Oh, I didn’t see you come in today.”

“How long have I been gone?” Ross asked, still afraid his freedom would be taken away again.

The secretary shrugged, “Long meetings do seem endless, don’t they? Which meeting was it?”

“Never mind,” Ross said, going back in and seeing if he could learn anything about the voice. He couldn’t.

He called Princess Shuri, “Your little stunt isn’t going to work, and I’ll have you arrested.”

“What stunt?” Shuri asked. Ross fumed. Of course, he had no proof. “I’m sorry, I’ve been in meetings yesterday and today, and you won’t believe how many people I’ve been talking to; which stunt are we talking about?” Ross fumed some more; of course she would have planned witnesses.

He spent the day trying to prove the Wakandans were behind it, without success. The next day, though, he ordered that prisoner Barnes be taken out of solitary, and that the soccer ball be replaced. He didn’t order the medicine from Wakanda, but he did send a psychiatrist in who prescribed medicine.


	4. Bucky Wakes Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve redone the Electric Ghost backstory to better fit this story.

Bucky felt like a weight was coming off as he slowly remembered that he’d vowed to fight the effects of prison. The dead still loomed over him, but he realized he was huddling in a corner and that the dead were, in fact, dead. While there was no way he was going to dishonor them by telling them to leave, he also refused to sit in a corner all day. 

He looked around the cell; it was different now. There was a bed with a blanket and a pillow, but there was no mattress. Luckily, Bucky had gotten used to sleeping in a bed, or at least a comfy cot, in Wakanda. There was also a round stool. Something stuck out from the wall, perhaps something to do with hygiene. Between the move from solitary to here, he’d been dressed in blue shirt and trousers with grey undershirt; they were just like HYDRA in dressing him without his consent.

A sound made him look around. He could see people! He was even pretty sure they were real. There were bored prisoners in their cells in a large circle, and he could see across the expanse into another prisoner’s cell. While the walls on either side of his cell were opaque, as was the back of the cell, the entire front of the cell was transparent except for horizontal bars, and it was this front that faced the circle of cells. It didn’t make for privacy, but he was through with being alone. He was content simply to watch humans sit in their cells.

Then he realized someone was glaring at him from across the way. Opposite him was an angry blond-haired woman with blue eyes. Her head was half shaved in a mod haircut. It was Tesla Tarasova, and he had shot her father dead before her very eyes when she was a child. 

He backed up in his cell and huddled in the corner. That night, Tarasov’s sightless eyes got right up into his face and wouldn’t leave him alone. Then Tarasov lay crumpled on the floor and stared with sightless eyes, while the woman assigned to protect him, Gina Autry, stared with a bullet between her eyes. Little Tesla was weeping.

Day after day dribbled by. The prisoners were woken up early in the morning for no real reason, but Bucky didn’t mind, as he barely slept anyway. They had to appear at the front of their cells every day four times a day to be counted, even though they were monitored around the clock and were all in sealed cells with one side being fully transparent. They had to obey the guards, or they would be punished. They could not think for themselves or have any control over their life. It was hard to remember that the guards weren’t HYDRA, and he thought of them as “legal HYDRA,” but some days, he dropped the “legal.”

The guards also seemed to be looking for something in the Raft, or were double-checking their procedures, but Bucky couldn’t figure what that was about.

The guards called him a freak, a weirdo. They told him he was dead. They’d broken his prosthetic arm, and he felt ashamed and didn’t want the Wakandans to know. 

“Hey freak,” a guard said as he brought yet another visitor to a nearby prisoner. 

“You’re like 15 minutes of vacation!” the prisoner told his guest.

Bucky looked away. He’d never gotten a visitor. He told himself Steve couldn’t because he’d sprung Sam and others out of this very prison, and Sam couldn’t because he had been the one who escaped the Raft. He had hoped Natasha would be able to visit, but apparently not; perhaps she was implicated in helping Steve. Or maybe she just didn’t want to visit a loser like him. Time continued to be not something he did anything with, it was something that was done to him. The monotony was getting overwhelming, even with people to look at.

One time, he woke up and he was the Winter Soldier, a thing to be ordered around, an assassin, except that some of the rage was replaced with nothingness. It scared him enough to snap him out of it, and he looked around to see if anyone saw, but of course no one cared. 

It happened again and again. Since he had a lot of time to think, he pondered this. Did he become the Winter Soldier because he felt like the Soldier? If they told him to kill, he wouldn’t, right? So feeling like the Soldier didn’t make him one, right?

What was the difference between HYDRA and the Raft anyway? The guards here didn’t fry his brain and they didn’t order him to kill. Now that they weren’t moving him to different parts of the Raft, he got to dress himself. He’d have to remind himself of the differences when he could remember them.

The guards either ignored the prisoners or liked to make their life harder, and Bucky was always on the alert. Once, the guards took Tesla out, possibly for recreation, but they started approaching his cell. The guards snickered and stopped when Tesla was right outside his cell. Bucky backed up slightly; after however long he’d been isolated, it bothered him to be this close to someone.

“You can’t go anywhere, your cell is too small,” Tesla observed, “Are you going to hide in the toity?”

“Get him! Get him good!” the guards whispered.

“I’m sorry you were caught,” Bucky said.

“No you’re not,” Tesla said. The guards liked that answer.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky said. He meant for killing her father.

She knew it, “We’ve been through this.” Bucky had met her once when she was an adult. After he’d killed her father, Tesla had grown up in a secondary Red Room, called the Orphanage, but she had eventually escaped and had used her father’s research as a way to destabilize much of the world before hiding out in Romania. “The last time I was drunk on power,” she said, shrugging. Bucky nodded; she had been more concerned about destabilizing the world than she had been avenging her father. She said nothing more but let her eyes tell the rest; she was saying she wasn’t drunk on power anymore, and he should watch his back.

“Awww,” the guards said, realizing they weren’t getting the fireworks they’d hoped for. “Move along.” They pushed Tesla along but let her give him one last glare.

“You two have history?” a female prisoner said on one side of his cell. He couldn’t see who the voice was talking to because the woman’s cell was directly next to him. “I’m talking to you,” she said.

As no one else had answered her, he assumed he was indeed the one she was talking to. “If you’re talking to me, I killed her father.”

“Oh. That’s awkward,” the woman said.

“I was brainwashed.”

“Whatever gets you through the day, honey.”

“Who are you?” Bucky asked.

“Call me Moonstone. I’m a psychiatrist who trained under Doctor Faustus.” 

Bucky stepped away from the wall like he was about to get burned. Doctor Faustus was a master hypnotist and manipulator of people’s minds. 

“She can’t get at you,” another female voice said. Bucky jerked towards the sound to find a warden looking at him. She had green eyes and short white hair that was brushed straight up, and the front hair was pink. 

She was on the women’s side of the Raft (he appeared to be at the dividing line between the women’s and the men’s). “I’m Melissa Gold, but my persona is Songbird.”

Bucky paused, “You’re enhanced?”

Melissa nodded but did not elaborate, instead she turned to Moonstone, “Don’t talk to him; you know we’re watching all of you.”

“Yes ma’am,” Moonstone said. “After all, I wouldn’t want to end up in a dump like here, now would I?”

“I mean it,” Melissa said and walked away. 

Moonstone called back, “And you guys keep forgetting I have a peanut allergy!” She sighed, “So bossy,” Moonstone said, “See that?”

Bucky couldn’t see Moonstone, but if the last comment was directed at him, he was darned if he was going to answer. He didn’t remember eating anything with peanuts in it, either, but with the level of cuisine here, who could tell?

“I’d watch your recreational privileges if I were you….” Melissa’s voice said from a little further away.

Moonstone made a disgusted sound but said nothing more.

Bucky wondered if he had an ally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Orphanage was not a secondary Red Room even if the setup was similar; I just say it is to tie it together. She has nothing to do with Romania, but in the comics, she and Bucky meet in outer space, which doesn’t work here, so now it’s Romania.
> 
> Both Melissa Gold/Songbird and Moonstone are part of the Thunderbolts during the period Bucky leads the group. In the comics, Melissa was also once a Raft warden.


	5. The Guards

If Melissa were his ally, she was the only one. 

Bucky overhead the guards talking about him. “Who do you think bothers him more, the weird electronic woman or the freaky psychiatrist?”

“Hmm, that’s a tough one,” another said.

“You’re an idiot,” said another, “He iced Tarasova’s old man.” 

“We gotta see if the Boss will let us switch ‘em.”

Bucky tried to not react when he saw the guards carrying electroshock weapons, but once he was in his cell when a guard checked his weapon and Bucky couldn’t help it, and the guard saw. The guard smiled ferally, “You don’t like this?” He turned the electroshock weapon on, and Bucky tried not to flinch. “Do ya like it better now, punk?” How dare he use that word, that was Steve’s word! The guard’s eyes lit up, and he brought the weapon close to Bucky’s brain, “You scared of this?” He revved the electroshock weapon, and Bucky froze rather than jump back. “Ha ha! World-class assassin is afraid of a little electroshock?” The guard gunned it again, “Not so tough now, are you, Tough Guy?”

The guard laughed and ambled away, and Bucky folded onto his bed, weak in the knees. Every memory of being mind-wiped flooded his brain. 

The guard, whom Bucky now thought of as Mr. Hyde (as in Jekyll and Hyde), always turned his weapon on when he neared Bucky. He told others too because several of the other guards started doing the same. But when Melissa walked past as Hyde smiled and revved his weapon, Melissa stopped him, “What are you doing wasting energy like that?”

Hyde pointed at Bucky, “The creep’s scared of it! Isn’t that funny?” He gunned it again and brought it closer to Bucky’s face. Bucky clenched his fists and refused to back up. Melissa hit Hyde’s arm, causing him to drop his weapon. 

“You’re wasting energy,” Melissa said.

They weren’t much better to Moonstone. He heard her through the wall. “Hey! I can’t eat peanuts!” He heard the guards laugh. Bucky hoped they never found out he’d herded goats because he knew what they would do with that; they already knew he had a goat painted on his arm.

Another time, Bucky could hear some guards talking on the other side of his wall, “Why are we patrolling here again? These freaks aren’t leaving their cells.” 

“The Boss wants security stepped up,” another said. “I hear he’s looking through procedures as if he’s afraid there’s something we missed. Rumor has it someone’s spooked him.”

“Shh! There’s a prisoner on the other side of this wall!”

“They can’t hear us.”

“Can you say ‘enhanced’ you idiot? What if the weirdo has enhanced hearing?”

They moved on. Had Steve spooked them? He hadn’t done anything stupid, had he? Was he captured? No, they would use that to torment him. What then?

Still, not everyone was on par with Mr. Hyde. There was a maintenance guy who was very calm, and he could be heard singing to himself as he worked, “Teenage mutant ninja turtles, teenage mutant ninja turtles, teenage mutant ninja turtles, Heroes in a half-shell!” Bucky tried to puzzle it out, wondering why anyone would sing about turtles that had somehow mutated, and what was a ninja, anyway? A special type of turtle? 

Hyde heard and laughed, pointing his weapon at Bucky, “He’s singing about you, ninja.”

“No, the show!” the maintenance guy said, “It’s the theme song.”

Bucky wasn’t sure what to think about the guy now, and he kept his distance. Still, the guy seemed to sing to himself and not at Bucky, so he relaxed a bit. Too bad ninjas turned out to be murderers, because Bucky felt calm around the guy. It took him awhile to hear the line about “Heroes in a half-shell.” What did that mean?


	6. I am Bucky Barnes

The dull, pointless routine and casual degradation continued to wear him down, and the dead threatened to become more real. At odd moments, condemnation would threaten to drown him. The only reason he ever needed to speak was to talk to the psychiatrist, who he visited once a week - when the psychiatrist remembered, or had time, he didn’t know which. Meeting with the psychiatrist was brief at best and seemed mainly designed to make sure he wasn’t going to kill someone. The psychiatrist never asked how Bucky was dealing with the dehumanization. 

But as Bucky sat staring at a wall in his cell, he remembered his vow to fight dehumanization. “I am Bucky Barnes,” he whispered. He didn’t want anyone to hear and make fun of him. “I am Bucky Barnes. James Buchanan Barnes. I was born in…” he fought off rising panic before the name came to him. “Shelbyville, Indiana. My parents were George and Winnifred Barnes, and my sisters Becca, Constance, and Georgie.” The childhood nicknames seemed out of place here, “… Rebecca, Constance, and Georgina. We moved to Brooklyn. Steve is my friend… I am Bucky Barnes… I am a human being.” He felt a little better. After this, he would repeat his name every time he woke. He looked at his broken prosthetic; gold had filled in the cracks, and he was supposed to remember that the gold referred to him…. somehow. He already forgot how.

Retreating into Nothingness was the easiest way to deal with the dehumanizing monotony, and he almost stopped repeating his name, but he felt it was important. What if he forgot his name? He asked the psychiatrist if he could have a notebook and pen, and the psychiatrist said he would check to see if Bucky had earned that privilege yet. Bucky didn’t dare ask again. The next week, however, the psychiatrist gave him a notebook and pen and said they would go over whatever he wrote. Bucky knew that he wouldn’t have any privacy, so when he wrote, he left out the horror. That cut out most of what he remembered, but he still wrote in tiny letters because he didn’t know if he’d ever get another notebook, and he assumed he would never leave the Raft alive. Before he’d turned himself in, people told him he would only be held in the Raft until his trial, but he knew that wouldn’t ever happen. 

One day, he wondered if there were anything he could do with the rest of his life. He found himself looking at Tesla across the way. Her father had been trying to defect before Bucky shot him dead. It was Bucky’s fault Tesla ended up in the Orphanage, and that had started her on the road that led here. Tesla rather naturally hated his guts. What could he do to help her? He couldn’t come up with anything. He even pondered it while with the psychiatrist.

The psychiatrist blanched, “Is something bothering you? Are you thinking of killing someone?”

“No!” Bucky said, “I want to help Tesla, but I don’t know how. It has to be something she’d accept from me.”

The psychiatrist paused in surprise, “You want to help her?”

“Yes, it’s my fault she’s here.”

The psychiatrist still couldn’t believe it. “You’re aware of the pain you caused her?”

“Yes,” Bucky said. 

The psychiatrist seemed to focus on Bucky as a person for the first time. But the psychiatrist couldn’t come up with anything, either.

Then Bucky remembered Tesla’s face when she admitted she didn’t remember what her father looked like. On another visit, Bucky asked the psychiatrist, “Do you talk with Tesla?”

“I can’t divulge my client base.”

Bucky nodded; it was too much to hope the psychiatrist would help. “If you do, or someone else does, she couldn’t remember her father’s face the last time we met. Maybe she’d like it if someone showed her a picture of her father.” Bucky knew the pain of looking at a picture of a family member and having that picture look like a stranger, but eventually, she might remember his face.

But he never knew if his suggestion ever got passed on, or if it did any good. Or maybe she’d already tried that.


End file.
